Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1880 [PAGE 32]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

30

instructors. It is the constant endeavor to make the course thoroughly practical and useful from an educational stand-point as well as to give the kind of knowledge necessary for the mastery of the material world.

APPARATUS AND EQUIPMENTS.

The Botanical laboratory has a growing herbarium, containing about eleven hundred species of flowering plants out of the fifteen hundred known in Illinois, a large number of flowering plants from other States and countries of the world, and a considerable collection of flowerless plants. Among these the Ferns and Fungi are the most important. There are compound microscopes and apparatus sufficient for use in the classes, so that during certain portions of his course every student has ample practice with them. Collections of woods of fruits, dry and alcoholic, of plaster casts, of microscopic preparations, of charts and drawings, make up, together with the greenhouse and its specimens and the library, the facilities for the study of Botany and Vegetable Physiology. A considerable collection of insects, especially of those inhabiting our own State, aids in the study of Entomology. Most prominent, however, in the equipments of the School is the

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM.

The room for the Natural History collections is on the first floor of the west wing of the main building. From north to south it is seventy-six feet long; it is sixty feet wide and sixteen feet high. On the west side are six large windows, and on the south, three, which ordinarily afford abundant light. Wall Cases.—Covering the entire wall on the east, and the spaces between the windows on the south and west, are two stories of wall cases; they are separated by a gallery on the three sides of the room, which is reached by iron stairs at the northeast and northwest corners. These cases, with continuous shelving, are eight feet high, provided with glazed doors. Floor Cases.—There are also on each side of the room, opposite the spaces between the windows, five upright glazed cases, for the reception of such large specimens as could not be accommodated in the wall cases. The two extreme ones on either side are 10 feet 8 inches by 6 feet; and the three middle ones are 10 feet 8 inches by 3 feet 6 inches; all 8 feet high. Table Cases.—Directly opposite the windows, so as not to obscure the light, and between the floor cases on each side of the room, are table cases, glazed at top, sides and ends, for the reception of shells, minerals or any small specimens. All this work, of wood and iron, was done at the University shops, and chiefly by the students of the architectural and mechanical classes.